In any case, wind power is being attempted off the coast of Georgia. We'll see if Georgia Power follows through. Florida already has massive solar power plants. The Southern Company is really and truly holding back the region.

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Finally, I've found an article that discusses this a bit more. Here is an exert of the introduction.

Quote:

With millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico over the past month and the ongoing threat of global warming tied to burning fossil fuels, the question of how we will power households and businesses through the 21st century and into the future looms larger than ever.

Among the crop of renewable energy options – solar, biomass, geothermal and wind, to name a few – it might be wind that is growing fastest, representing about 35 percent of all new energy construction in last two years, according to the Department of Energy.

The Southeast, however, is lagging well behind the curve when it comes to wind–power technology.

By the end of last year, there were still no wind installations producing more than one megawatt (MW) of energy from Virginia to Florida and west to Louisiana, according to data from the National Renewable Energy Lab. Southeastern states, except Tennessee, are the only ones left in the contiguous 48 without any commercially viable wind power.

The forecast, particularly in South Carolina and Georgia, may be improving, though.

Last November, South Carolina and Clemson University were awarded $45 million in stimulus funds to build a wind turbine test facility that will develop the next generation of technology.

While Georgia’s progress isn’t nearly as concrete as our neighbor to the north, there have been signs that winds of change are starting to blow.

In celebration of a reporter taking greater note of the project, I'll sum up some updates on wind power from the last month.

US Q1 wind power construction fell to a 5 year low compared to other first quarters. However full year construction is expected to reach 6.1k (down from over 9k last year). Several articles cite lack of transmission capacity, lack of financing due to the crisis, or long approval for new projects. To further explain, the stimulus funds that boosted 2009 production focused on both ready to go projects and new ones. New projects however take up to two years to go from proposal to wind generation for several bureaucratic reasons. You can read the Q1 report released here.

Lake Erie and Ontario are part of as many as four new proposals for offshore (but freshwater) wind farms from the Great Lakes. One Lake Erie project proposes up to 1 GW of power which would be the largest wind farm in existence. However, by the time it is built several other wind farms would be larger. Here is an article from NY. Here is one about the 1 GW project.

A new study revealed massive untapped wind and solar transmission potenial in the West to open up massive new areas for investment.

Several massive wind projects have been planned for the 2011 and 2012 time period with individual farms as large as 5 GW and states planning as much as 18 GW of new power pending completion of transmission line expansion. Total US power output is less than 500 GW with current wind power capacity at 35 GW.

Fiorenza said that wind power was insignificant as a percentage of our energy production. Here are the top three percentage wind states in 2009:

Iowa: 14.20%
Minnesota: 9.40%
North Dakota: 8.10%

Here are those same states in 2008:

Iowa: 7.10%
Minnesota: 7.48%
North Dakota: 4.68%

Now this is the total power produced over the course of the year delivered to customers even while construction was occurring. States like Texas already have 8.7% of their power capacity in wind for 2010 with more on the way. There is nothing insignificant about this.

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Just back out in the air I imagine. Take your
typical automobile and put a tank of gas in it if you can afford to. Now that motor is going to heat up like a son of a gun but is all that power going into the wheels? No.

How is that classified as unused energy? We are getting into thermodynamics here. Sure if you burn gasoline, the energy of the chemical bonds isn't 100% translated into thermal expansion inside the chamber and the chamber cannot 100% translate thermal expansion into rotational energy but that chart makes it sound like someone is being foolish.

I dunno, that chart isn't very useful until someone invents a zero entropy engine cycle in the year 3457 AD.

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Where is the love? We've only got one world. Time that we share it.

Well, I guess they are talking about energy that is put to some useful use, not just going off into the air. Like that electricity that comes out of the wires and whatnot during a transmission. A good example is you get out on a crowded highway where there is a bunch of cars jammed up, you can feel the heat coming off but it is not making the cars go. So it is wasted as far as transportation goes. Same with a computer, you have got to have a fan to blow off all the heat even when the dadgum thing is not doing any computing.

As to that chart, I did some investigating to find out who this Lawrence Livermore is and it turns out the Bechtel people are behind it which figures, along with the U.S. Government.

Now it says there is also some National Academy of science outfit involved but you can find science going every which way. Like the man said, somebody has got to stand up to these experts and I am glad to see somebody doing it.

Man what a bummer I have to leave for work and I miss a good conversation.
Anyways, not sure if anyone still cares or not but here are a few links to consider.
First is about the sheer number of turbines needed for wind to hit 20% of our usage and replace all our coal power plants. The article is in response to what someone said but it has some good info for our discussion: http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/hot-air-on-wind-energy/
The electricity projections here show how much more energy we'll need in the future: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/

Also while on the plane I read a good article about how much electricity is "lost", if we could fix that issue it would help a lot. The article I read was from Discovery magazine and didn't show 50% for lost energy but it was still very high (I think around 30%). I tried to find the article but it's not on their site yet, but I did find this good one about nuclear energy.

There definitely are some wind skeptics over at fact check but I guess they are always 100% skeptical about everything, thus their job. Thus the no two sides about it.

To just respond to a few things, the offshore production wouldn't be the bulk of wind power produced in the US. Current actual factual construction projects today puts our wind production at 6% by 2013.

Also on the Road Island bit, wind turbines are a few feet wide at the base and have rotor diameters up to 50m. 250,000 wind turbines is a 500 by 500 square. Physically thats 25 km by 5 km. That is 125 square km. Road Island is 3,140 square km. So no, it wouldn't take up Road Island.

If they were referring to the size of a wind farm, they require 5 diameter spacing row to row and end to end. Thats a 150km by 125km square which is 18,825 square km (between NJ and Conn. in area) Therefore "size of Road Island" is a bit of bull on both ends.

However lets look at this magical 250k number. Is correct? Is that a lot? Is a wind farm the size of NJ undoable? Well a single wind turbine produces 2-4.5 MW depending on the model with sizes getting bigger each product cycle. The US has an overall capacity factor average of near 40% so we can assume 1.4 MW of continuous power per turbine on average. It would take some doing to find, but that means that there are currently somewhere around 30-50,000 commercial scale turbines in the US today and we've barely scratched the surface. South Dakota alone could provide 50% of the US electricity demand.

Lets keep in mind a few things here. Wind power is something that only came into force since 2007. It is new and often ignored and most of the general public sees it as some kind of dreamy proposition without realizing that a great deal of Dallas is powered by it. If in that environment wind could, without any infrastructure changes, achieve as much as it has and considering that it is cost effective in dozens of states, there is no reason to think that it couldn't achieve 20%.

I dunno, I guess I don't get why big numbers scare people. The current plan is for wind at 20%, solar at 20%, nuclear at 25%, natgas at 20%, hydro/geo/bio at 10% and clean(er) coal at 15% by 2030. The only laggard in that plan is solar.

I am curious what 20% solar would take. 20% wind is easy.

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Where is the love? We've only got one world. Time that we share it.

Let me just say something in addition. China is on track to do far far more than we are from wind. Are we saying that China is just better than us? For silly Americans it's impossible, but China it is just a matter of inevitability? Why? Same with India and western Europe.

India is targeting more solar energy production in 2030 that it has total production today.

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Where is the love? We've only got one world. Time that we share it.

Well, I seen this thing last night that said the Chinese are putting in 250 miles of subway in Beijing alone where we can't get even one little high speed light rail line going. Can you imagine somebody doing something like that in the USA.

The subway they are putting in looks like some space age thing, with all the latest contraptions and whatnot which makes ours look like antiques.

So it is probably the same with wind. The older generation over here did the best we could and handed it off to the young ones but now it is up to them to carry the load.

Err, I'm young as are most Americans. In fact China is aging faster than we are. If you mean age of the nation itself, China has us beat there too.

Yes we have more wind power than any nation on Earth. We have the largest solar power plant on Earth and the largest wind farm on Earth. We cradled all these technologies for decades and all that is left is to build.

If we only had the will.

I think the biggest problem we have is naysayers that think that any technology post-1970 is just impossible. The is moot anyway. Obama is far more optimistic about our capacity to achieve and all we need is for energy legislation to pass to take the decision making out of the hands of people heavily invested in the past.

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Where is the love? We've only got one world. Time that we share it.

Heh Pickens is all talk. You'll have a hard time finding his wind farm. Anyway boomers are in control until further notice and they aren't getting poorer. They literally have to die off before the X takes hold and then another 20 years before Y.

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Where is the love? We've only got one world. Time that we share it.